Promise
by Saphira112
Summary: He was sitting there. Just sitting there. Thinking about everything and nothing and not making sense of any of it. "I thought I'd find you here." A promise. A stray tear. Matt/Mello. Gift-fic for a friend.


He was sitting there. Just sitting there.

Just sitting in the old rundown chapel building, the large cross on the thin stand on the roof still holding itself up. There was broken stained glass littering the floor of the chapel and the only stained glass window that hadn't been shattered was one of the Virgin Mary holding the Baby Jesus three windows away from the center altar – which was no longer there. The sun was filtering through that particular window and lining the broken down walls with brilliant colors of yellow, purple, and orange.

He wasn't religious despite the rosary that hung around his neck, the same rosary he was fiddling with, his thumb going over the cross again and again. As if he were praying, but he wasn't. His eyes looked up at the stained window and he wondered for a split second if there truly was a God.

Then he chastised himself. Of course there wasn't. His mother who had dumped him off when he was five had been a religious woman and believed in a supernatural being that would make her an angel. Ha, as if. There was no God and she was certainly no angel. No angel would abandon her son…

"Thought I'd find you here."

Mello snapped his head up, but he didn't turn around. He calmed himself. "Matt. What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," was the response and footsteps echoed around the building. They came closer until coming to a stop three benches away. "A little birdie told me. You come here a lot."

"I come here to think."

"About what?"

"… Nothing."

Matt frowned. Mello had been acting weird. "You're not thinking about nothing; you're thinking about everything and can't make sense of it. So you don't know what you're thinking about, but you are thinking. Am I wrong?"

"Perceptive."

"Just observant."

"You're too modest."

"That may be true…"

Silence. There was a bird chirping outside and it flew inside the open chapel, landing on a mount where the center altar should have been, but wasn't. Mello watched it for a long time. The bird looked back at him and tilted its head, as if trying to read his mind.

A gloved hand covered Mello's eyes and he jerked in surprise before another hand – this one on his shoulder – calmed him again. Matt was behind him, covering his eyes and holding him still. The blonde could feel the other's breath on his cheek and his own breath hitched. What was Matt trying to do?

"I do worry about you, ya know," Matt's voice was low and close to Mello's ear. "I don't tell you that I worry because you don't want to hear it."

"Then why are you telling me now?" Mello asked quietly.

"Because you'll need an explanation for why I do what I do without me having to say it."

"So you follow my orders because you worry about me?"

"I don't see them as orders; I see them as requests."

"You do what I ask of you because you worry?" He re-stated the question.

"More than that, but yes."

"Why?"

"Because we're all going to die someday and when that day comes, I'm not letting you die alone."

"Matt…"

What the gamer had said was cheesy, but Mello couldn't bring himself to state that. He knew there was more emotion in that voice now than there ever had been. The hand over his eyes remained while the hand on his shoulder moved across his chest. He felt a hot breath caress the side of his face and felt a pressure on the side of his head. Mello's lips parted slightly as Matt embraced him, holding him gently, the smoker's forehead against Mello's. There was the slight stench of the nicotine Matt insisted on smoking, but Mello found at this moment he didn't truly care about it.

It was… comforting. Mello almost dared to believe for a moment that God did exist and Matt was an angel, but the fact that the thought was cheesy enough made him banish that and all linked feelings from his mind. Matt was human, just as he was, but he was his best friend. Matt had taken care of him after the explosion that had burnt half his face without so much as one look of disgust.

Matt promised he wouldn't die alone.

And yet, when Mello was driving the van with the kidnapped Takada in the back, his eyes looked down at the report on the small television and felt a twinge of pain and regret as he saw the bullet holes in the car and the body of his best friend… and lover.

_'Matt… I got you killed… I made you break your promise…'_ A stray tear.

_'Forgive me…'_


End file.
